Script Storage and Abandoned Interruptions: Hollywood Braces for Labor Dispute Next Year

A bad sense of deja vu is setting in in the industry as the year draws to a close its end.

Hollywood is in the midst of a transition and an economic downturn is on the horizon. The company is full of Under New Management signs after a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions. Big media earnings and stock prices are in the tank due to all the uncertainty. And the tribe of Hollywood scribes is restless.

The outlook for the next six months is starting to look a lot like summer and fall of 2007, the last time the entertainment industry's biggest employers faced a work stoppage with the Writers Guild of America.

There is no doubt that the guild is preparing for battle. Studios are starting to rush there too. The dreaded S-word - storage - is happening, the industrial equivalent of troops gathering at a border.

The Guild and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the bargaining agent for major studios and Hollywood networks and streamers, face a May 1 deadline to establish a new minimum basic agreement to succeed the current pact that governs most mainstream scripted TV and film productions. SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America, meanwhile, have contracts that expire on June 30.

The process to bring the three unions to the bargaining table took a step forward this week when the WGA unveiled the 24 members of the negotiating committee who will lead the talks with the majors. The group is co-chaired by two former WGA West presidents, showrunners David Goodman and Chris Keyser, who led the guild's surprisingly successful campaign against top Hollywood talent agencies from 2019-21.

Other members include many who have been active in trying to ban the old practice decades of talent agencies receiving packaging fees for helping put together TV shows and movies.

"Everything changed after Labor Day," says a longtime network executive. "Everyone is calling trying to find someone with a drawer desk project with some scripts."

Industry insiders say there has been a noticeable scramble among creative executives at best stores to complete scripts and set schedules that speed up writing time to be completed well before the May 1st deadline. Production schedules are also changing for existing series. There are anecdotal reports of networks pushing shows to shuffle scheduled winter break weeks in order to stock as many episodes as possible.

Hurry comes at a difficult time, when Hollywood is already feeling the effects of the belt-tightening and shifts in strategy among top streamers. Netflix, Amazon and Apple have injected billions of dollars of new capital into the content industry over the past decade. Today, as Netflix reaches the promised land of profitability, its desire to spend to drive subscriber growth is changing.

The presence of streamers with global reach — a list that includes Disney+ and HBO Max — is the X factor in this round of negotiations. More than ever, Hollywood's largest employers have the ability to create or acquire content outside of the United States.

"What if Netflix decides it doesn't need a new show every week? What if Amazon decides to limit itself to a few big shows a year? If they don't lose Prime customers, are they going to care?" asks a senior executive at a talent agency who nervously watches the market. writers I know who make over a million dollars a year freak out about a strike."

The biggest issue in the talks, as always, will be over economic terms. Writer-centric social media channels abound with stories of scribes receiving residual payments for streaming reruns that wouldn't cover a dinner for two at The Cheesecake Factory. The WGA, along with the DGA and SAG-AFTRA, are surely poised to push the majors for residual stream and royalty gains. As more TV and movie viewing migrates to online and on-demand platforms, a few valued WGA members are receiving the benefit of a $15,000-25,000 residual check for linear replay of an episode or a movie they wrote.